FREYJA: The Goddess of Discernment; I spend my time wisely. I only say yes when it’s a holy hell yes.
Freyja embodies the fierce and finely honed spiritual skill of discerning the most life-giving choice in each moment. In Norse mythology, Freyja is one of the most powerful and important deities.
She is chief of the Valkyries: the demi-goddesses who choose who will live and who will die during every battle and war. After being Valkyries, the demi-goddesses become Norns: the great goddesses who weave the fates and histories of people and nations.
Discernment is derived from the Greek word diakrisis. It refers to a spiritual power that allows you to distinguish between the spirits that will cause harm and the spirits that will assist you. It lets us discern when a phone call, or an email, or a visit from a friend is going to add to our day or if it’s going to derail it. Discernment is the difference between feeling led by the day, pulled this way and that, and claiming it.
Our time, in this lifetime at least, is limited. Every second is significant. Freyja reminds us of the searing perception we all have but perhaps don’t use frequently enough. She wants us to be discerning with how we choose to spend our time and whom we choose to love. She wants us to never, ever say yes to anything or anyone from a place or fear or obligation.
You are a demi-goddess, a Valkyr, a priestess of your own fate. You get to choose the life you want to live. And this happens by being fierce and warrior-like about what you say yes to. Use discernment so that you are only saying yes to what will actually nourish and renew you, inspire or expand you. It’s not your business to worry about those you might disappoint. You were not made to meet everyone’s expectations of you. You were made to express the truth of who you are and to use the brief time you have here to live out your potential.
Nothing is obligatory except breathing. Your only true obligation is to the voice of your own soul. Freyja wants you to realize the gleaming gold that you are and act accordingly. She wants you to unapologetically choose the life you actually want to be living. Right now. She wants you to make your yes holy gain by only using it when it’s the truth.
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GREEN TARA: The Buddha of Enlightened Action: My soul informs my every step. I do what my heart compels me to do.
Green Tara embodies the emboldened state that overcomes fear and allows us to take action on what we know is right. Tara is a female Buddha in the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition. She is known as the “mother of liberation” because her name is derived from the root “to cross”. Tara assists all beings in crossing the ocean of suffering to liberation.
Tara has four different types of enlightened activity and divine attributes, depicted symbolically through the colors red, white, black, yellow and green. Green Tara is Tara’s embodiment of compassionate action, or enlightened action. Her green color signifies vigor and vitality. Her mudra also represents vitality, and the purity of our life force, the prana mudra. She is the action we take from a deeply rooted place within our heart. She is the energy that seeks to act in alignment with what will free us as we liberate others.
Green Tara is that sacred nudge to get moving, to do what it is that your soul compels you to do. Don’t sit with an idea or a project any longer; take action on it. Don’t think about a friend who keeps coming into your heart; go bring her dark chocolate or send her a love letter. Don’t wait to express your love to someone you’ve needed to, go now – tell the truth. Let your feet be moved by what has been caged within you. Let your wisdom shift into inspired action.
Tara is the message that the time for action is now. There’s nothing to wait for, and no person you need to become before doing what you’ve come here to do. Start small. Let the soul lead, not the ego. It’s not the grandeur of the gesture or effort, it’s the amount of love something is done with that ever matters.
There are so many injustices in the world, so much suffering, that it’s easy to get stuck in the molasses of helplessness. The brilliant Burmese diplomat Aung Sun Suu Kyi says, “If you’re feeling helpless, help someone.” Green Tara is about aligning what moves us to tears with compassionate actions. She’s the push to do something, anything that might alleviate the suffering of others. In the process of taking action with love and from love, we also liberate ourselves.
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SARAH-LA-KALI: Queen of the Outsiders: I have arrived. I am where I will always be: in love.
Sarah-la-Kali is the symbol of the love that endures, the love that never dies. There are three main legends that surround Saint Sarah. First, she is known as a charitable noblewoman who collected alms for the poor in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in the south of France at the beginning of the 1st century. She had a vision that the female saints who were present at Jesus’s death would arrive on their shores. And when they did, around the year 42, Saint Sarah was the first to lovingly welcome them with open arms.
The “golden legend” from the 13th century says that Saint Sarah arrived with the three Marys – Mary Magdalene, Mother Mary and Mary of Bethany – as one of their slaves. She was said to be an Egyptian, very beautiful, and endowed with healing powers.
The third legend is that Saint Sarah is the daughter of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ. During the persecution of the early Christians, it is believed that Mary Magdalene fled with young Sarah, Jesus’s mother and Mary of Bethany to the south of France. There she raised Sarah and continued her ministry of love, of becoming what Christ referred to as “true human beings,” meaning both fully human and fully divine.
Saint Sarah is known as the Queen of the Outsiders. She is the beloved patron saint of the Romany people. She is carried from her crypt in the cathedral to the sea on horseback every May 24 by thousands of Romany who gather annually to celebrate her. There’s an ancient chest in Saint Sarah’s cathedral that contains the relics of the three Marys. Saint Sarah represents the spiritual tenet of the Camargue cross: faith and hope, but above all, love.
No matter who you are, or where you are, Saint Sarah’s love is the kind that reaches you. There’s nothing you need to perfect or prove. There’s nothing you need to wait to become. There’s only the deep, abiding truth that love is not outside of you. You are never an outsider to love. You are love.
Saint Sarah is the ultimate love card. The one that whispers what you’ve always known: that love is our true purpose and our only true home. Love is where we will all arrive. No matter how persecuted, how lonely, how outcast we might feel. No matter how long it has been since we’ve felt loved. Saint Sarah is the healing that comes when we embody love again. She is here to welcome us back to the singular destination we actually never left. Home is only as far as we allow ourselves to be separate from the space of our own heart.
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